Katusha's Alexander Kristoff made it a hat-trick of wins with victory on the fifth stage of the Tour Of Qatar.
A hot and windy day for the riders on a 153km stage from Al Zubara Fort to Madinat ash-Shamal, saw the riders led by race leader Niki Terpstra of Etixx Quick Step.
The peloton was to split shortly after the flag dropped and a group of fifty five riders had a twenty second lead over a second group which shelled out the likes of Sir Bradley Wiggins, Danny Pate and Ramon Sinkeldam with twelve kilometres gone.
The race leader with six team mates was in the front group and they worked to increase the lead to thirty seconds with 43 kilometres ridden.
Twenty kilometres later and a group containing Maciej Bodnar and Fabian Cancellera caught the front group which split when Ben Hermans of BMC attacked and was soon joined by Marco Haller, Matthew Hayman, Jelle Wallays and Dimitry Gruzdev.
After Theo Bos had been forced to abandon due to the effects of a crash, Matthew Hayman beat Wallays to the sprint after 87 kilometres.
With Leigh Howard abandoning, the gap to the front five continued to increase and Hayman was now the virtual leader on the road having been 1.19 down on Terpstra at the start of the stage and now with a lead of 2.35.
There was no way, Hayman was going to be allowed to stay as virtual leader for long and the peloton chased the escapers down. So much so, that when Haymen took the second sprint, the lead was only thirty five seconds and with one lap to go, everyone was back together.
A group of ten riders but not Terpstra got away. They did not get too far as Etixx Quick step brought Terpstra back to the main group which contested a sprint with Katusha's Alexander Kristoff winning his third stage in this race in 3.02.01 ahead of Peter Sagan, Niklas Arndt, Tom Boonen, Adam Blythe, Heinrich Haussler, JJ Rojas, Arnaud Demare, Greg Van Avermaet and Nacer Bouhanni.
Niki Terpstra stays in the leaders Gold Jersey going into the final stage, with Kristoff in the Points jersey and Peter Sagan in the Young Riders classification
.